Have you ever wondered what it would be like to tug Mario's face? If you've fiddled with Super Mario 64's intro screen, I guess you already have, but even then, did it not feel like it was missing something? Some key ingredient that would transcend your inexplicable rudeness to that obnoxious next level?
If you live in Japan, I've got some good news for you: Hello, Mario!, which is available now on the iOS App Store, Google Play, and the Nintendo eShop itself, will let you toss Mario's head all the way down a warp pipe. Take that, Nintendo 64. Oh, and there's a bunch of other stuff in the game, too.
Look How They Warp Piped My Boy
Hello, Mario! launched just yesterday in Japan as part of Nintendo's 'My Mario' initiative, which includes an awesome wood block set that functions as amiibo, a board book that lets you open Mario's mouth (?), and a collection of stop-motion videos. According to that website, "selected products in the My Mario series will also be released outside of Japan beginning in 2026', and as the folks at Nintendo Life have deduced, this likely includes the Hello, Mario! app.
Unsurprisingly, Hello, Mario! is aiming for the young children's demographic, but you can download it at any age, I promise. Nintendo's official description is as follows:
"A free smart device app and Nintendo Switch software that children can play intuitively by pulling Mario’s face, or turning it around and around on the screen. Mario will react in various ways based on the player’s input, allowing parents and young children to play together and enjoy each reaction they see." -Nintendo
The ever-reliable Mario Wiki has a great rundown of every mode. You can pull Mario's cap off, change Mario's mustache shape with a joint tug of both sides, pull his ears to make him stick his tongue out, pull his eyebrows up or down, press on his eyes (!) to spawn a pair of sunglasses, press on his mouth (?!) to make him whistle or blow a kiss (?!?), rotate his head to make him dizzy, press on his nose to make him sneeze... look, this is horrible stuff.
There's also a separate menu that'll trigger the arrival of a Blooper, a Cheep Cheep, a Note Block, a camera-toting Toad, a Super Star, a Super Mushroom, a ? Block, and that terrifying warp pipe that I mentioned earlier. If the warp pipe sucks him down, players are tasked with either locating the absconded plumber in one of three pipes, or a single pipe will reappear on the screen, and you can simply touch it to cause the undoubtedly panicking Mario to launch unceremoniously back into view.
Have fun, I guess.
